Covered stadiums are presently in use to provide a controlled environment for outdoor sports events. Recently the present applicants have developed a stadium building with an improved retractable roof to take advantage of the natural environment when the weather is fine. Such a structure is disclosed in our U. S. Pat. No. 4,676,033 issued Jun. 30, 1987. Interest has now been shown in converting conventional covered stadiums to retractable roof stadiums because of the perceived advantages of the applicants' concept.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a retractable roof stadium which may be constructed on the site of an existing conventional covered stadium, allowing the existing stadium to continue to be operational while the retractable roof stadium is being constructed.
Interest has also been shown in providing new stadiums utilizing the retractable roof of the applicants' concept on sites having an elongated rectangular field but because of the basically circular configuration of the roof of the structure such a building would occupy excess lateral ground and if compressed into a smaller area it would reduce seating capacity at the corners of the field.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a retractable roof stadium utilizing a smaller area of land.